Fucking Compromise

I'm trying to become an art writer. I'm not sure of the best way to go about it so I've just been sending out submissions willy nilly and seeing what sticks. (Nothing so far). The writing style exemplified on this blog is very different than what I've been sending out to editors, but it's in this style that I feel the most comfortable. Maybe too comfortable. last week I sent a writing sample out to an editor of a local on-line publication and the editor wrote me back on the very same day. I was excited because it's a great art resource and I'd be thrilled to work with them. I replied with a long diatribe in which I opined and waxed poetic on various topics and themes. I also included a link to this blog because I figured it would give them a more comprehensive picture of my writing style. Overall I was pretty proud of my response. 5 days later cut to me freaking the fuck out wondering why the editor hadn't gotten back to me. There could be a thousand reasons so I decide to send him a follow up email, just in case my previous email had gotten lost in the shuffle. After I sent off the follow up I remembered I'd included a link to my blog in the previous response. I felt a twinge and read back over my blog. With horror I remembered a post I'd hastily put up one day with a video having something to do with Matthew Barney. In the post I'd written something flip about abortion and I realized as I re-read it that it was totally fucking offensive. This is what I had sent off to the editor of a publication I'd like to write for. AWESOME. Nestled in among my shining gems of artistic insight and carefully crafted observations regarding area art lectures was this fucking dirty bomb of trashy, crude, cheap humor. My face did that thing where it feels like the sinus cavity is full of lye and I started to scratch my palms with horror.

Bottom line, it was a joke and anyone that know me is aware that I always have and always will make off-color jokes. I sent this dude this blog as a way of giving his a more complete picture of how I write. This blog is part of me too. I can write a semi-scholarly comparative analysis piece and an off color joke about selective abortions with just about the same level of proficiency. But what if that other side of my writing had totally put him off and he could not longer stomach to read anything I write. What if the whole picture of me is not what editors want to see? What if it's not what anybody wants to see? I've had people tell me that I should only write the raunchy jokey stuff and I've had other people tell me it totally puts them off. I know I need to find a balance but I don't know where it is.

This is the hardest thing about being in a creative field. It's one of the hardest things about being a human. Everyone is always telling us to be ourselves and that we shouldn't worry about what other people think, but the main goal of being a writer or an artist or a musician is getting people to like what you make. For one, you gotta sell that shit. I don't want to be a waitress forever. Apparently one's work is always the most successful when it's made for it's own sake, or so motivational speakers, already successful artists and the author of "Art and Fear" would have us believe, but that's how the cycle begins. You continually refer back to that initial success and how nice it felt to be praised and that becomes the carrot. It's like crack. At least some part of each one of us likes to think that what they're putting out into the world is somehow being appreciated. But what happens when the public doesn't like our most honest effort? Do we try to change? Give up? If we change what we make because people don't like it does that make it false?

I freaked out and deleted the abortion comment and combed through all of my posts trying to weed out anything offensive. I censored myself so is my work now dishonest? I'm not making it for it's own sake anymore it's for someone else. I guess I got really upset because I knew what I'd said was kind of shitty and that I didn't stand by it. It wasn't even THAT funny. More than anything the abortion comment had been a slapstick effort to get noticed. It was disingenuous and that never comes across well. But I didn't know I was doing it at the time, so how am I going to prevent myself from doing it in the future? How do I ever really know if I'm really being true to myself at the moment of creation? (If anybody out there is thinking "you just know" I would like to slap you in your face. How's that for offensive?) Or MAYBE and worst-case scenario, the abortion joke had been a golden nugget of my best work and I now I could only see it as a black mark on my record. Like when you introduce the awesome dude you have a crush on to your best friend and she makes fun of his leather coat and you no longer find him attractive at all. I mean, it's a leather jacket. Those are REALLY hard to pull off.

The editor wrote back to me as I was typing this post. He said that he preferred my more thoughtful, scholarly writing as opposed to the "rants" on my blog. I was glad that he liked something, but I was mildly offended and concerned that he didn't like any part of this blog. At some point in my life I'd like to be able to strike a balance between writing like a scholar and writing like myself. I know there is a happy medium to be found. I hope to find that balance in myself. I want to be intelligent and thoughtful and eloquent but at the same time see humor in pretty much everything because there is always humor to be found. (except in this post apparently) I wonder if maybe after I write how people (editors etc.) want me to write for awhile will they then be more open-minded about seeing my other work. Or will I just write for awhile and then fade into the background of every other lame-ass art writer out there? I guess me sending him this blog is kind of like that dude in my college painting class who handed in splatter paintings for every critique. He's a sophomore at UMass Boston and he's trying to paint like Jackson Pollock. You can't just walk into the world as J. Pollock. He studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in NYC before he even discovered liquid paint. There is something to be said for learning the basic and putting in the labor before you get recognized for your own individual style. But it still feels like a compromise and that sucks.

I wrote the editor back and said that this blog was just a place where I go to vent and that I was sorry I'd sent it in the first place. I said that I hoped it didn't offend him at all. As I wrote it I felt myself resenting him because of how I'd handled his constructive criticism. I knew that what I'd written hadn't been my best work but I didn't need him to tell me that, and I didn't know it at the time that I was writing it. I'd asked what he thought and he told me. It's his job he's an EDITOR. Still, I'm hurt. I'm ranting. I can see how this is going to go. I should just start drinking whiskey and move to a cabin in the woods now. Why go through all the effort of spiraling?